Feature Index Page 8

These days, it seems like Valve will let just about anything on Steam. Programs like Greenlight and Early Access make it easier than ever to get a game on the preposterously popular PC storefront. Some of these games are very bad. How does this happen? What is the process actually like?

Oculus, HTC, and Sony have all released pricing details for their upcoming virtual reality headsets. But what seems pretty cut-and-dry gets complicated in a hurry when you consider they all need additional hardware to power the experience. To help make sense of it all, we've gone through the hassle of analyzing everything to see what the true cost of ownership looks like.

It's impossible to deny that 2015 was an amazing year for the PC ushering in a new golden era of PC gaming. 2016 will have to produce some truly special games to match last year's offerings, and so far, it's not doing too badly but there's still plenty more games to come. Here are our top 10 most anticipated titles.

If you're among those who've preordered a VR headset or are still on the fence, you may be wondering what are you going to be able to play with it? We've compiled a list of some of the most anticipated or interesting titles arriving soon. Keep in mind that many existing games are getting VR support, though for this list we've kept it (mostly) to made-for-VR games.

It's been a busy week as more than 90,000 people stormed Barcelona to catch the latest mobile announcements and innovations. This year's Mobile World Congress brought us new smartphones, hybrid mobile devices, more VR hype as well as wearables and IoT gear. Lets take a look at the highlights of the three-day event.

The new Ashes of the Singularity benchmark 2.0 brings support for explicit multi-adapter (EMA), DirectX 12's multi-GPU technology, which enables support for both AMD and Nvidia GPUs in the same system. This means it's possible to pair a GeForce GTX 980 Ti with a Radeon R9 Fury X and that's exactly what we'll be focusing on today.

Unlike years past, today there are a vast number of quality gaming laptops available that can not only match most home rigs but occasionally outperform them. If you're in the market for a new gaming laptop and want to know what components will give you a well-rounded rig, here's a breakdown of what's on offer.

In 2015 I saw a ton of great smartphones hit the market, but I'm yet to see the elusive 'perfect' device -- the phone with no compromises in hardware or software. In this article I'll go through every aspect of the modern smartphone and list exactly what I want to see, with every aspect of it firmly grounded in reality. This is a smartphone that should be possible to create in 2016.

I think it's happened to us all at some point or another: a game you've idolized from afar finally comes out. You boot it up and brace yourself for magic. Hours pass. Magic still hasn't happened. This is... unexpected. That is when you begin your Dante-esque multi-stage descent into a very unique sort of madness: disappointment.

Looking ahead to 2016, I expect we will see changes that, on the surface, also don't seem to amount to much initially, but will actually prove to be key foundational shifts that drive a very different, and very exciting future.

With 4K monitors becoming more and more affordable, it appears that the long-standing reign of 1080p may finally be coming to a close. The question is: can the human eye actually see the difference with a 4K monitor? To answer that question we will need to determine the pixel pitch of a monitor and compare it to what you are actually capable of seeing.

Building a gaming PC can be time-consuming and stressful. There are a thousand things that could go wrong, and any one of them could wind up costing hundreds of dollars. And yet we do it anyway. Why? Because building PCs is totally awesome.

Unlike the other gaming platforms we've been evaluating here at the end of the year, the PC's been around for decades. Recently, the PC's long legacy of openness and customization has come into conflict with a mainstream that's finally-finally-realized just how big of a deal PC gaming actually is. By and large, the PC is in a great place in 2015.

The Z170 chipset has been available for some time now, but due to Intel's staggered launch of Skylake-S, other chipsets from this generation have just recently become available. In addition to the Z170, there are now five other consumer chipsets: the H170 and H110 for consumers and the B150, Q150, and Q170 for business. We explain the differences between them side-by-side.

Part one of this series focused on software. This second part will focus mostly on the iPhone 6s' hardware, and how it compares to some of the best Android devices I've used this year. Apple is widely respected for their hardware design, both on the inside and outside of their phones, but just how good is it in 2015?

There have been many popular and important games included with operating systems over the years. But only one game can lay claim to having once been the most-used Windows application in the world, as Microsoft's Chris Sells described Solitaire back in 2004. This is the story of Solitaire, which has been included with every copy of Windows since version 3.0.

Flash, it's been a good run. We've had a lot of fun together, but it's time to get some distance.. permanently. That doesn't erase my fond memories of playing together back in the day, but we both have to wake up and face the truth. You're outdated and insecure and untrustworthy. It's not me, it's you.

There's no clear-cut metric to use as a guideline if you're shopping for a sound card. Lengthy audiophile reviews are available, but they generally don't offer a quantifiable takeaway if you have a limited point of reference and don't know much about the subject to begin with. I fall into that category.

With the recent launch of the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, I decided to pick up one of Apple's latest smartphones and use it exclusively for two weeks. What follows are my thoughts on the phone and the ecosystem as primarily an Android user, how the two experiences compare, and whether long-time Android users should contemplate an iOS switch.

Water cooling systems -- whether they are a custom loop or an AIO -- all follow the same basic principles. You have the reservoir, the pump, the radiator, the fans, some tubing, a block (for either the CPU, GPU, or both), and the water itself. After years of working with water cooling kits, here are some important tips to help you get the most out of your system.

As Steam has expanded over the years it's also taken on an infernal-machine-like quality; it's become this cacophonous conglomerate of bells and whistles, many of which are buried under other bells and whistles. It's hard to know everything it is capable of, so here are a few lesser-known Steam features I've come across.

Logitech recently reached out to us for a tour of their audio headquarters in Camas, Washington, where it's spent the last 18 months designing what it believes to be the best sounding, most well-featured headset on the market, gaming or otherwise. In fact, they're so confident in the Artemis Spectrum, it bravely threw its creation to a small pack of skeptical tech journalists in hopes they'd go home impressed. Here are our thoughts.

The last two decades has seen users rising from forty million to around 3 billion, with one billion added in the last four-five years itself. And yet over 4 billion people remain unconnected to the Internet.

Many of Windows 10's key features have been talked about at length, but the operating system actually comes with a lot of great features that aren't as immediately obvious to everyday users and even enthusiasts. Here are the top 10 hidden features of Windows 10.

Thanks to the rapid rate of change in video games, both my job and the industry I cover are practically unrecognisable. This is largely what keeps me interested in video games, this pace of transformation: there is always something new to cover, and we're always trying to find new ways to talk about it.

There are some classic PC games -- some old enough to buy their own alcohol -- that are as good today as the day they were released. You may not have heard of all of them. After all, when a game has been out for a while, people generally stop talking about it. They are still out there though, waiting patiently for someone to pick them up and play. In this article, we are looking specifically at games that are still fun to play, ten or more years old, and are the best of their style in their series.

For a very long time, people have imagined the life of a video game tester, not as 9-to-5 job but as the fantasy of teenagers everywhere. Who wouldn't want to sit on a comfy couch and play games all day. Reality is a little different. Over the past few months I've had extensive conversations with several dozen current and former QA testers in an attempt to explore the world of video game testing and try to explain what it's really like to play games for a living.

Take a look back at how Intel CPUs have progressed over the years. We're testing and comparing the original Core 2 Duo CPUs against the Nehalem-based Core i5-760 and Core i7-870, the Sandy Bridge Core i5-2500K and Core i7-2700K chips, and then to the current generation Haswell Celeron, Pentium, Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 parts.